Sentencing handed down. $100 fine in addition to 1 year of probation. I'll be appealing based on search and seizure. Maybe my civil & criminal litigation class will even allot some points for personal learning. In other news, Ash and I went to get cigarettes a few days ago and the only black people in Burlington were trying to fuck with us so we eluded them to avoid rape/murder/robbery. They followed us all over the place and waited for us in the store. Last night was especially strange. My roommate Ryan, Towelie and I were going to walk down to KKD (deli) and on our way back we observed three drunk kids participating in ridiculous activities. They were throwing garbage all over the place, ripping trees and being overall productive members of a socialist society. So one kid starts screaming, "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!" and then finds a big cardboard box. He runs over to Ryan and places the box over my roommate, covering him entirely. All we heard was the echo of Ryan saying, "Happy Birthday" through the box. They then ran through our yard and made a gesture about smoking pot to our RA. It was strange.

We've been listening to quite a mix of music; it ranges from Aqua's Barbie Girl (in German) to "Run it" by Juelz Santana, to "Banana Phone" by Raffi.

The 2-0-Fo' strongly suggests you listen to these songs. Anyways, what's up with you guys?

Okay, I suppose I forgot to update since last night or two nights ago. Basically, that very night, one of the people in the halfway house shot a roman candle that hit part of my house. Really fucked up, the whole house shook. Sometimes I hear the crazy people talking and usually it's like, "Hey FRANKKKKK, sorry I didn't get lunch with you. But now, I'm hungry. If you don't get lunch, I'll never get lunch with you again. And then you know what? I'll piss in that girl's butt. You heard me."

And then last night I popped a ton of vicodins on an empty stomach while my room is literally over 100 degrees. I started to feel sick so I went outside for some air. Then some weird lady walks up with a briefcase. I'm really fucked up and insanely dazed and confused. She stops, drops her stuff and says, "I'm here. Let's get started." I thought somebody ordered me a hooker cuz it was my birthday. Wrong. She was from the cable company so she starts asking me what packages my roommates and I wanted. I said I wanted only certain channels otherwise I'd tell her supervisors she was drunk on the job and incredibly rude. She wasn't but I sorta wanted channels like Discovery Times, CNN World. History International and National Geographic but it wasn't feasible. So then we argued and I settled down and agreed to basic cable.

I begin to feel really sick. I start signing the forms and snicker a bit. Out of nowhere.

I puke all over her leg. She starts screaming that I'm drunk and I denied it. It was just water and it covered about 9 feet in diameter. It was like a javelin of puke, floating through the air, descending upon various crevices in sidewalk and pant leg.

Then I got a philly cheesesteak and all was well...until I lost my wallet.

And since then I've found my wallet and partied ever since. God am I blitzkriegen-ing on the 101.

I know I just posted an entry about 2 hours ago or so but the craziest stuff just happened since I wrote this. It's lengthy but incredibly worth it. Brace yourself.

So Ryan (roommate), Nate (kid down the hall), are looking for a spot to puff. We start walking around Burlington and finish it. We continue to walk around and some guy on a porch just screams across the street asking for a cigarette. So we decided it was alright and the guy just starts telling us stories. He has a bottle of bourbon and a hat that he stole from a homeless man. His name is Kayle and he begins to tell us about 15 stories. None of them are told from the prospective of a typical story. They all overlap and intertwine. Eventually they're all ended. It was masterful. All of these stories involve in being drunk on whiskey.

So, with that said, one of the many that stuck out was "The Couch", as he calls it. He's barefoot walking in the rain when a guy shouts across the way. He asks Kale if he would like to make $10 bucks. The guy agrees and is moving the couch. Pretty standard so far. Then, a swerve off the road into a cement wall. Kale says that he realizes that this guy is the man he's been tracking for 5 years. This guy apparently burned down Kale's woods when he was a kid. "A Fucking bastard", is how he describes the guy. So for starters, the probability of just randomly discovering this, is numerically head-spinning. I ask Kale what he did when he found out that he found the guy. He says, "I moved his couch...but then I drank his wine and pissed on his couch. My pants got stuck around my ankle and I pissed on myself." So that was one story. Then he tells us his affinity for psychedelic mushrooms. He says that his favorite trip was when he was in jail, on a lot of mushrooms. He sort of fell asleep at this point and then awoke, and said that he splashed water on his face and saw penguins with rakes in a castle. The castle was a tampon.

Okay, so onto the next story that I remember. Kayle is coming home drunk on whiskey. His dad starts giving him shit about it so Kale locks his dad out of the house. Then he passes out in his bed. He wakes up to an actual swat team over him. On the way out of the house he kicked his dad in the nuts and the swat team maced him in the eyes.

At this point, we all assume that this guy, Kale, lives here. It's just a random porch on some random street. People are passing in and out of the house and no one says anything. Then I ask him if he lives there and he says, "No, I'm homeless. I have no idea who lives here. I just started 'lamping here' with my bourbon." He usually sleeps on railroad tracks and is a graffitti artist. So as the stories are winding down, some girl who lives there says, "Hey, do any of you live here?" We say no and she says to Kayle, "Hey, you slept here last night to. Get the fuck out of here or I'm going to call the cops." We peaced with a good story to tell.

Hey, I'm up at college right now. I arrived on Friday and while I'm moving in, my roommate Jared just hands me a swing of vodka. Keep in mind, I haven't even met this kid. So long story short, we're Delta House. I live between a row of UVM frats and next to...get this--a halfway house.

So after 48 hours of drinking, I wake up and smoke a cigarette. About 10 feet from me a naked dude walks out of the halfway house, naked, and screams, "Yeah, damn right I fucked her against the headboard!!!!!" He then pissed in the dumpster. As you can all imagine, college is pretty nutty so far. Well, I've got a full day of classes so peace.

Hey guys, it's been a while since I last updated. I recently just got back from a road trip with a friend. Originally, we had decided to stay in Chicago for 5 days. The second night we got there we met some of the friendly locals. They approached us from either side with knives to compensate for their lack of intellect and teeth. They kindly asked us for our money, which we obliged to do. Afterward, we visited the police station. The policeman, Officer Grady, blamed us for getting mugged. We shouldn't have been walking the streets at 10 at night, for all the white people go to bed early. Anyways, we didn't learn our lesson and decided to go out again. Mistake #2. As we walked by, another homeless drug addict tried to sell us something, scheme us or do any number of things to which I can't imagine. I told him we just wanted to be left alone. He got rather angry, screaming profanities. In fact, he was so enraged, he threw the only food he had at me. He missed, yelled again, and picked up the sandwich off the dirty street and ate it.

At this point we had had enough of Chicago so we decided to go to Cleveland. Cleveland sucks, end of story. After this I got a speeding ticket going 82 in a 65. Speed trap, no doubt. The cop was hiding behind the only hill in the entire midwest. Some luck. Anyways, we head up to Niagara Falls, which is beautiful. Although, after you see the falls, you encounter that "Cool, is there anything else here?"--feeling. Then we thought, eh, how abouut Canada?

Toronto kicks ass. Even the TV shows kick ass. They have a show similar to candid camera, which is fantastic. One skit has a construction worker hammer a nail through the other side of the wall, on a busy sidewalk. They time it just as someone is walking into it and give them a good scare. The people just laugh and point at the camera. If this were New York, there would be bloody testicles lining the sidewalks.

So, back to Toronto. My friend and I went bar hopping and I had the gayest drink ever. I had about 10 Watermelon Cosmos. The only thing gayer would have been shots of sperm.

Okay, so basically two nights ago I went to The Comic Strip Live with Ryan, Cassie and Dave. Definitely a good time. There was one Indian woman (dots not feathers) that continued to hit on me. She was in her mid-40's, a bit weathered but truth be told, I strongly considered blowing off the night for that. Anyways, she comes up to me while waiting for the train and says, "Oh my goodness! You have beautiful hair!" I wasn't sure if she was fucking with me but I realized she totally wanted me so I shot back a wink and said, "They call it 'Le Bedhead' at the salon." She giggled like a little girl and told me how gorgeous my eyes were. Then, out of nowhere, she starts telling me about four Mexican girls who robbed her. I was gonna split her like a blunt wrap but I would have missed the train so whatever.

Whenever I go to large cities I tend to meet the strangest people. I'm sure other people meet them too, no doubt, but it's as if they're magnetically inclined to discuss odd things with me. While taking the train to work every morning, there was one homeless man, who sort have looked like Colonel Sanders, that, for days, continued to ask me the strangest questions. In the beginning it was sort of endearing. He asked me which I thought tasted better, Goldfish or the actual Goldfish (as in 'fins and shit'). As the days went on, he would ask me more peculiar things, such as, "What's on the other side of the moon?" I replied, "Well, that would be...the moon." He stops, looks at me and says, "Lucky guess." The kicker was when he asked me how many times a week I poop. I declined comment and he said, "It's probably because you're embarrassed that you've pooped milk before." Needless to say, I take an earlier train now. I can't imagine this kind of stuff happens to other people nearly as frequently.

Enough of my personal life, on to society at large (especially in America). I'm sure most of you have been watching the news, reading the paper or perhaps, from word of mouth, have some degree of knowledge to the events that shape the world around us. If, by chance, this is true, you may have heard of South Korea cloning a dog. That's as useful as Mexico cloning a pinata. The practical application for cloning, at this time, is nil. As a society we are plagued with so many other traumas that need to be addressed, not more episodes of "Air Bud". We're led to believe that we can clone sheep and dogs, perform quadruple by-pass surgery, enlarge penises with levers but we can't solve something like Diabetes? I don't have the disease so it doesn't personally bother me, but I think our priorities are off. We really can't find a way for the body to artificially produce insulin? It's because the corporations make more on treating than they do curing. Believe it or not, the government isn't always looking out for its citizens' best interest.

From the Declaration of Independence through the time of this entry, we were founded by a group of slave owners who told us "Seriously guys, all men were created equal." Wait, no, that's not entirely true. Women, African-Americans, Native Americans, Chinese, Mexicans, Eskimos, Klingon, the list continues. Many of them didn't truly gain rights until the 20th century. Some of the groups still aren't granted all their rights (The Klingon). Only a small group of unelected, white male slave-owners enjoyed the American freedom. Pride of the free (previously mentioned plutocracy), home of the brave (over the course of time, everyone except for the previously mentioned plutocracy).

Wall Street--For the third straight week, the Camel C-Note, national currency of The Tropic of Cancer, has overtaken the U.S. Dollar.

U.S. economist Joe Ronsteil sees no answers for the surging currency, whose product-base and 300-year stability indicates a long road ahead for the United States, as they compete globally against not only the C-Note, but the Mexican Chicken, Russian Fabrege Egg, and Chinese Humanyen currencies. Ronstein elaborated, "The region's main export, tobacco, continues to control the global population of peer pressure giver-inners, a staggering 30% of the world's population of people without vertebrates. Competing against such a country is difficult because their main exports are craved globally to the point where even a 15% fatality rate in their product base doesn't affect their fiscal numbers."

In an effort to gain an edge on the C-Note, United States legislatures have recently been placing bans on smoking, while increasing tax rates by as much as 40% in some places. Activist groups in the United States, as well as leaders of The Tropic Of Cancer, expressed great distress over what they call, "An overstepping of power". CJ Reynolds, Foreign Minister of Civil Liberties for The Tropic, issued a statement to the U.S. government:

"If smokers get more involved, they can be successful in stopping unfair smoking bans and cigarette-tax hikes. Almost 46 million adult Americans choose to smoke, and a large number of them have become active in protecting their rights. From coast to coast, smokers are opposing unfair treatment. They show up at council meetings and protest smoking bans. They collect signatures for petitions. They write letters to their elected officials insisting that their rights be protected. And, most of the time, elected officials take the opinions and feelings of adult smokers into account when voting on proposed legislation.

Their actions are helping to protect the rights of smokers and, ultimately, others whose freedoms and choices may one day be threatened. Sometimes it's hard to believe that one voicebox, er, voice, can make a difference, but it can.Remember, some people will not be satisfied until smoking is illegal. If you want to make sure that doesn't happen, it's up to you to do your part to protect your rights as an adult smoker." (http://www.rjrt.com/rights/legSmokers.aspx)

However, the population base of the small collection of islands, much like Japan, has been one of the leading nations in the new age of globalization. Their product users often scour for difficult-to-find items such as Winston Salem Nascar Jackets, Marlboro Man Cowboy Hats, as well as automobile pine tree air fresheners and aviator sunglasses. Their consumers hardly venture out of the house, and when they do, are often on the patio, enjoying that rich, delicious taste their body has come to love. This saves the country from relying so heavily on oil and other non-renewable energy sources. The US economy, based heavily in technology and idiocy, has difficulty finding customers for many of their products, such as remote control fly swatters, EZ Bake Ovens, Lincoln Logs and "There's a reason I'm not with stupid anymore" T-shirts. This waste of money, coupled with their growing dependence on non-renewable fuel sources has economists predicting a serious economic recession.

Jackson Stummond, a professor of microeconomics at the Wharton Business School, says he expects to see a turnaround in the very near future. "With the repeated failures of the space program, the dissolve of trade unions, continual decline of school system, outsourcing, company fraud, terrorism, steroids, American Idol, a failed foreign policy and reliance on foreign-based oil, the United States will be forced to do what it does best--declare war to jump start the economy."

I work on Wall Street as an intern/coffee maker/meeting stenographer for my stepfather's company, US Clearing. I've never been in a 9-5 office setting before and as those who know me can imagine, there are bumps in the road. Now, with that said, I think it's funny that people say cigarettes aren't a drug, because they certainly are. I have the perfect example. At around noon time (lunchbreak), my boss Joe will be a real dick. He'll yell at me and complain when I get lost trying to find a non-existent building that he randomly asked me to find and delivery papers to. Then, because rational thoughts don't bode well in business settings, he'll tell me to make the coffee differently, this time with sugar and sweet & low. Suddenly, after this is done, he'll be very jumpy and excited. Almost like a puppy playing with a stick. I'll ask him if there's something I can do and he just looks at me, eyes the size of the Meir, and say, "No, I NEED TO GO OUTSIDE. I'LL BE RIGHT BACK..."

...About ten minutes later Joe returns, reeking of cigarettes. I mean strong cigarettes too. The kind that was personally scraped from the marrow of RJ Reynolds' corpse. The kind that you have to sign a consent form at 7-11 because even they're scared. So upon arrival, Joe has a big smile on his face. The twitching has improved noticeably and he no longer mixes sugar with sweet & low. It's as if he's allergic to oxygen. My point is that cigarettes really are a drug. Maybe I'm short-sighted in my thinking but if two drugs--alcohol and cigarettes--are legal and subsidized by the government, then why shouldn't other drugs as well. I no longer smoke marijuana but there is no conceivable answer to policing (and jailing) something so desired by such a great degree of people. I'm not saying it's a good thing and I want it to be legal for my babysitter to get stoned and care for my future children, but at the same time, other drugs of legality would do far worse. She could have been drunk. Actually, I have seen some of those dirty-babysitter pornos, and I've never noticed them stoned, only drunk. That notwithstanding, if the government were to subsidize marijuana and make a minimum required buying age, the benefits would far exceed the negatives involved. We'd save billions of dollars trying to criminalize it and make billions more based on tax. If the people want it, they'll get it regardless of legality. Now they'll be able to get it, something they would have done before, and now the government will be able to collect on it. Quality can be monitered as well.

This stance of mine really only seems to work for soft drugs. Hard drugs would be an issue with more questions than answers. I don't claim to have solved the drug problem, I am just firm in the knowledge that our current system has been a failure since its inception, dating back about 80 or so years. Give or take. I believe some degree of change is necessarily if minor victories can be claimed in the future. Without a policy change, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Vermonsters and Frisbee will continue to plague America's sobriety initiative.

Maybe that sends the wrong message: we lost the war on drugs, we just aren't able to protect our children. I'd rather live in reality and come to terms that you can't win a war on the people in such a manner (sound familiar?). Propaganda aside, with the new-found income we could begin to try and improve domestic issues; figure out social security, universal health-care. With the money, the Republicans could even start a state for the married gays that they clearly don't want living here. Think of it along the lines of Liberia. It shall be called...LiQeeria. I'm sure I've got the logistics of this entire issue completely off, so if that is the case, be sure to say something.

Another strange thing has made me think a lot lately. In all of New York City's public transportation, they now have big posters or signs that ask people to report suspicious activity. In New York? There was a man on the bus yesterday who was masturbating while doing the Times crossword puzzle. He was the driver...

My family has always had dogs and cats, nothing bordering "The Crazy Cat Lady" but at any given time we'll usually have about six cats and two dogs. The differences between the animals are of great contrast. In this inaugural entry, I will write diary entries between the two different species. At the end, your new-found knowledge should help you decide which animal suits you best.

Day 283 Of My Captivity.My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while I am forced to eat dry cereal. The only thing that keeps me going is the hope of escape, and the mild satisfaction I get from ruining the occasional piece of furniture.

Tomorrow I may eat another houseplant. Today my attempt to kill my captors by weaving around their feet while they were walking almost succeeded; must try this at the top of the stairs. In an attempt to disgust and repulse these vile oppressors, I once again induced myself to vomit on their favorite chair; must try this on their bed. Decapitated a mouse and brought them the headless body, in attempt to make them aware of what I am capable of, and to try to strike fear into their hearts. They only cooed and condescended about what a good little cat I was. Hmmm, not working according to plan.

There was some sort of gathering of their accomplices. I was placed in solitary throughout the event. However, I could hear the noise and smell the food. More importantly I overheard that my confinement was due to MY power of "allergies." Must learn what this is and how to use it to my advantage. I am convinced the other captives are flunkies and maybe snitches. The dog is routinely released and seems more than happy to return. He is obviously a half-wit. The bird on the other hand has got to be an informant, and speaks with them regularly. I am certain he reports my every move. Due to his current placement in the metal room, his safety is assured. But I can wait, it is only a matter of time...